Before the colonial era, 100,000s of people lived on the land now called California, and many of their cultures manipulated fire to control the availability of plants they used for food, fuel, tools, and ritual.

The Splittail, or Sacramento splittail, Pogonichthys macrolepidotus, is a cyprinid fish native to the low-elevation waters of the Central Valley in California. It was first described by William O. Ayres in 1854. It is the sole living member of its genus, the Clear Lake splittail P. ciscoides having become extinct in the 1970s.
The distinctive feature of the Splittail is the larger upper lobe of the tail fin. It also has tiny barbels at the corners of the mouth. The dorsal fin has 9-10...